This invention relates in general to a mounting bracket, and in particular, to a means of holding an object on a wall without requiring a frame or attachment, particularly facilitating ease of repeated removal and remounting of the object.
Much of the best pictoral art produced over the past twenty years appears on long-playing phonograph record album covers, but there has been no convenient, inexpensive, non-detracting means of displaying such album covers for viewing. In addition, conventional means of hanging or mounting pictures, if adapted to the wall mounting of record album covers, generally would prohibit keeping a record in the cover in such a way as to conveniently remove the record for use or insert it for storage. Consequently, this great quantity of art has little utility beyond initially attracting the eye of a potential purchaser of a phonograph record.
It is, therefore, a principle object of this invention to provide a convenient mounting device for holding a phonograph record album cover on a wall for visual display without interfering with the record protecting utility thereof.
Another object of this invention is to provide non-detracting means of visually displaying art work.
An additional object of this invention is to provide means for mounting art work without a frame or attachment.
A further object of this invention is to provide means for mounting art work while allowing easy and repeated removal and remounting of the art work.
A still further object of this invention is to facilitate ease of aligning a plurality of art works in desired horizontal and vertical patterns.
Another object of this invention is to provide a mounting bracket in which an art work can be repositioned horizontally without affecting its vertical position or its angularity, after first affixing the bracket to a wall.
Features of this invention useful in accomplishing the above objects include, in a mounting bracket, a rear member which can be attached to a wall or other generally vertical surface, having a forward extremity lower than the rearward extremity of a front member joined to the rear member by a bottom member below these extremities, and having a horizontal displacement, between these extremities, less than the thickness of the phonograph record album cover or other mounted item, singularly or with shims, and having flexible members joining these extremities, having the clearance between the rearward extremity of the front member and the front surface of the rear member greater than the thickness of the mounted item, with the front surface of the rear member connected to its forward extremity with a forwardly inclined surface, thereby facilitating easy insertion of the mounted item down and into the bracket by sliding down the inclined surface which acts as a wedge causing the mounted item to displace, forward, the front member. The bottom edge of the mounted item will rest on the bottom member of the bracket with the lower forward extremity of the rear member pushing on the lower rear of the mounted item while the upper rearward extremity of the front member pushes on a higher area of the front of the mounted item with a force dependent upon the flexure of the members joining these displaced extremities, thereby creating a force couple holding the top back surface of the mounted item against the wall to which the bracket is attached, thus allowing repeated removal and remounting of the mounted item without altering its appearance or utility. Used singularly to mount an art work, the width of the bracket would be not less than 5% of the width of the art work and would be attached to a wall with not less than two fasteners, thereby allowing the art work to be repositioned over the width of the bracket, as long as the art work's center of gravity is within the bracket width, and the bracket will be prevented from rotating by the multiple fasteners. The same effect will result by using a plurality of brackets, which may be narrower and attached to the wall with as few as one fastener each, as long as the art work's center of gravity is between the outside bracket's fasteners, or between the outside bracket's extreme edges if two or more fasteners are used in the outside brackets.